The travestly of an immigration bill that Bush is currently pushing, Harriet Miers, "Hell-of-a-Job" Brown, and countless other examples of incompetence has convinced this right winger that Peter is correct. And I'm not alone. Did you read Peggy Noonan's latest article in the WSJ?
Right wingers should not excuse incompetence and stupidity among people who claim to be one of us. Of course, Bush's claim to be a conservative are false, as proved by the above examples along with many others (such as his runaway spending). If only more pubbies in 2000 would have realized that he was an incompetent fraud, maybe we could have nominated someone decent.
And yet, even having known in 2000 that he was a fraud and no conservative, I voted for him twice. Such is our system, in which we are forced to choose the lesser of two evils. My only surprise has been that the degree to which he was a lesser evil than Gore turned out to be much smaller than I anticipated.
Conservatives should always be skeptical that the government leads to competence and efficiency, even when the person in charge is the closest of the two candidates to our own thinking.